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Cloning is a concept that runs in almost every industry that exists, for ages. And the world of website development is no different from others. Multiple tools are available to clone a website, be it a command line or GUI. Being in the business of coding for years now, we at AddWeb have cloned a number of websites/website pages to fulfill the requirement of our client.

Over a span of 6+ years of our existence in the industry as a leading IT company, we have worked with a host of international clients. Similarly, this time too a client, whose name we can not disclose due to legal & ethical reasons, came up with a requirement of cloning multiple pages for their Drupal-based website. And we, buckled-up to deliver our expertise and stand true to the client’s requirement.

The Client’s Requirement:Simple cloning is not an extraordinary task since the modules for the same are easily available from the community. But this one required us to clone multiple pages at a time, where the original page is not affected. Also, the pages had to be cloned in such a manner that the components of the same are thoroughly included. Scrutinizing the nature of the requirement, we realized that this type of cloning required us to either custom-create a module or make alterations to the existing module available for cloning. The website was in Drupal 8 and we knew, it’s about time to show some more love for our most loved tech-stack.

The Process of Cloning:Drupal 8 has always been our favorite sphere to work on. So, all excited and geared up with the tool of our experience over the same we searched out the available module for cloning from the community site of Drupal - Drupal.org. The name of this module is ‘Entity Clone Module’.

The Emergence of Challenge:But as they say, “Calm waters does not make a good sailor”. The water was not calm for us either. Because as we said the cloning module that we found from the community came with a limitation, which was that only one page can be cloned at a time. So, now was the time to bring our expert knowledge of Drupal to use and create a custom module that fulfills the requirement of the client.

Overcoming the Challenge:We have had made a couple of modules in Drupal earlier and hence, we knew we would be able to create a fine custom module for cloning. And we did it! Yes, we created a custom module which came with multiple page templates, group-wise. One just needs to select the required page-template, submit the form to clone it and it’s done. Every single selected page gets cloned along with the components. This process turned out to be immensely useful for the editor. Because it saved both the admin’s time as well as energy to clone the pages. This process was otherwise quite tedious and time-taking since the admin had to clone one page at a time; whereas here just one single click and multiple pages are cloned together. And we’ll definitely share the credit of creating this custom module for cloning with the ‘Entity Clone Module’; since we used their script and made some alterations and addition to it in order to make the multiple-page cloning feature possible.

The Final Word:We, at AddWeb Solution Pvt. Ltd., believe the ultimate achievement of any work that we do lies in the satisfaction that the client feels on delivering the final product. And we don’t whether we’re just lucky or too good with our work that like others, this client too responded to us with the appreciation - not just for the quality of the work that we deliver but also for the ‘Artful Agile’ process that we choose to follow for our work!